By admin 
Looking out over Sutter Health Park, Sunday, while the blue-and-orange Astros faced off against the green-and-gold Athletics at the team’s last game of the season, just beyond the left field foul pole there was a visible mass of white T-shirts.
Read more Local ballot measures to watch in the Sacramento area for the Nov. 3 election
The wearers — members of the Rivercities Baseball Initiative, or RBI — are part of a small but growing grassroots group lobbying for Sacramento’s consideration in the national contest for an MLB expansion team. Their members circulated throughout the concourse, waved signs, led chants, gave interviews to two TV stations and played host to the mayors of Sacramento and West Sacramento in hopes of spreading their founding message: that the region is a worthy host for a permanent Major League Baseball team, and has a large reservoir of loyal fans ready and waiting to buy tickets.
“There’s a dedicated core of people who are willing to stand up and say: ‘We want this to happen, and we’ll do what it takes to help make it happen,’” said Matt McDonald, the group’s co-founder. “Sacramento has fantastic sports fans, who are totally on board and totally tuned in to what’s going on with the expansion question for Major League Baseball.”
Local government and business leaders from both sides of the Sacramento River in May launched into the national contest for an MLB expansion team, armed with pledges of land and public and private investment, and the argument that the Athletics’ three-year stint here, before the team moves to a new stadium in Las Vegas, can serve as an audition of sorts. As local officials made their MLB aspirations known, the RBI group also announced its presence as the grassroots, fan-led arm of the effort.
On Sunday, two of RBI’s members manned a table just inside the entrance of Sutter Health Park, and over the course of the game their Instagram following grew to around 140, from 40, and they gained about 200 signups for their mailing list, said RBI member John Fingarson.
Some of the group’s members were part of “Crown Downtown,” a group that, in the 2010s, advocated for the Sacramento Kings to remain in town when the team’s future in the region was in question. They packed city council chambers when Kings-related matters were on the agenda, and spent hours waiting for opportunities to speak publicly on the subject.
“So many city council meetings. Just wasting Tuesdays,” recalled Joseph Gutierrez, a 38-year-old healthcare recruiter from Sacramento.
“But,” he added, “it wasn’t a waste.”
Gutierrez grew up in Sacramento rooting for both the A’s and the Giants — “sacrilegious to some people,” he acknowledged, “but we didn’t have our own professional team.” While he believed the A’s should have stayed in Oakland, the news of three-year stint here was exciting.
It was, perhaps, a chance for Sacramento to prove itself a worthy host of a major league team. As soon as word was out about the team’s West Sacramento residency, there was also chatter about what it may take to secure a permanent MLB presence, and what sports fans could do to help.
On Sunday, RBI borrowed from the Crown Downtown playbook of making large, public showings of visible support. Mike Tavares, a co-founder of Crown Downtown and of the Rivercities Baseball Initiative, showed a photo on his phone of the Sacramento city council chambers one night in 2013, one side of the room comprised of fans in matching white shirts.
“The lesson is: You’ve got to be physically visible. You’ve got to be seen doing the work and making the effort,” McDonald said. “Being a keyboard warrior online through social media doesn’t impress anyone. Showing up and being there and being part of it is really what matters.”
The task ahead, though, is different from that of the 2010s. The fans who fought to keep an established professional team here are now setting out to help attract one that does not yet exist, and won’t for years still.
There are other uncertainties. Though league officials have signaled clear interest in expansion, they have yet to launch an official process to do so. The MLB is in talks for a new labor contract, and owners are pushing for a salary cap that players roundly oppose, raising the possibility of a walkout in 2027. And critically, while West Sacramento was armed with $800 million in land and private investment and forecasts of $1 billion in public financing from the city, it lacked a lead investor to head a potential team ownership group.
Read more Newsom signs fireworks oversight law prompted by deadly Esparto explosion
On the other hand, there are likely years ahead before the league expands, giving the region time to build its strongest argument. The league’s commissioner has said he wants a process in place to grow the league to 32 teams, from 30 by the time he retires, expected in 2029.
The former Crown Downtown members, Gutierrez said, are used to the role of underdog. Sacramento’s NBA arena had plenty of doubters. And when the two cities’ mayor’s stopped by RBI’s patio gathering Sunday, they shared the fans’ optimism.
Several members of the steering committee for the region’s campaign, The Sacramento Pitch, have been individually meeting with interested investors, said West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero.
“It’s been, I think, looking pretty good,” Guerrero said.
Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said “a few entities” had reached out to the committee.
“We know, in the new world of ownership of professional sports, it takes a very unique class of individual to be the lead,” McCarty said. “It’s not even a billionaire. This is a multi-billionaire world now.”
The group, he continued, had set out with a goal to announce a lead investor by the end of 2026, and he believed they were on track to do so.
Troy Bedal, a former Crown Downtown member, repeated a common refrain from the campaign to keep the Kings: “It’s bigger than basketball.” The MLB bid, he believes, likewise transcends the sport. It’s a matter of civic pride, and the potential for growth, new jobs and economic development.
“People are — especially me — passionate about the city of Sacramento,” said Bedal, who has tattoos of the Golden 1 Center, the Tower Bridge, an Interstate 5 sign and the Ziggurat building.
When the game ended, the Athletics down by nine runs, the Astros bound for the playoffs, there were around 50 people remaining on the RBI patio.
“That’s game,” one announced. The group rose and gave one final, hearty “Sac-ra-men-to” chant before dispersing in a flurry of fist bumps, handshakes and hugs.
Baseball fans, the Sacramento mayor observed, don’t want to have their hearts broken by a failed expansion campaign.
“‘Is this legit?’ they ask me,” McCarty said. “They want to know, ‘Hey, is it a real possibility?’”
Read more Who is running for Los Rios Community College District’s board? 3 seats on ballot
Nothing is guaranteed. But he thinks Sacramento has a chance.
This story was originally published September 28, 2026 at 11:40 AM.